The day after New Years we moved with help of Changing Spaces movers (they did a fantastic job, I highly recommend them) and also started the process of making the new apartment more homey by painting and cleaning. My mom, my Aunt Terri, and I worked until around 11:30 that first night and got the bedroom done and the cabinets primed. Wednesday we started on the kitchen and the dining room, and last night mom and Aunt Terri finished up the bathroom, the living room, and the hallway. At about 9:00 last night, I was coming to the end of my rope. I was trying to put up the backsplash in the kitchen and needed a Phillips head screwdriver so I put down the aluminum flashing and went to look. I looked everywhere: the kitchen, the dining room, the living room, and on and on and on….finally I was in the spare bedroom digging through the boxes in the closet and I just started crying. I felt so…unglued, like the haphazard state of my apartment was a reflection of the chaos inside my head. I was ready for some order, some organization, some sanity! I had finally hit my limit.
Read any poll regarding the top 10 stress- causing events and undoubtedly moving will always be at the top, following divorce and death of a family member. There’s so much that goes in to moving, the organizing, the packing, the cleaning out of unneeded items. I was really surprised at the two things that stressed me out the most though: the amount of dust and dirt lurking behind all of my furniture that I never knew was there, and the fact that we had movers moving our stuff for us. I somehow felt guilty that they were carrying my stuff…even though I was paying them to do so. I can’t tell you how many times I actually apologized to the movers for having to move our stuff down 4 flights of stairs. I would find myself cleaning extra hard or moving small stuff just to feel like I was doing something too. For the past 3 nights, instead of coming in and chilling out after being up early and at work all day, I’ve come home to my mom and my aunt at my apartment working so I immediately began working too.
Through the events of the past few days I’m coming to understand two things: one is that I have a really hard time letting people do things for me. I either come out feeling guilty or like I need to do something of equal importance back. Two is that I’m starting to understand that deep inside there’s a little bit of OCD in all of us. I’m always making fun of Clint because he literally CANNOT relax if our apartment isn’t picked up. He could work a full day at the store, play a gig until 2 in the morning, and if he came home to a messy apartment he would not be able to sleep until he had put everything away. My OCD is more focused on symmetry and the actual cleanliness (read, if it’s not cloroxed or dusted, it’s not clean). And the thing is, a house is never really clean. It’s an endless job, so I start feeling frustrated that I can’t ever really accomplish anything. I could spend all day doing laundry and at the end of the day, the clothes on my body will be dirty. I could do the dishes, but we’re just going to eat again in a little while. I can scrub the bathtub but it still looks dirty ‘cause it’s an old tub.
It’s weird how the older you get, the more anal you get about stuff. I hate it. I was telling Clint the other night that I really want to learn how to rest. I honestly think I don’t know how. I want to learn how to be ok with not always being in control. I don’t want to think at 23, how could I ever have kids? They would ruin everything. Is restfulness a personality trait written in our DNA? I can think of a couple people whom I would describe as “laid-back” people. Were they born that way or did they learn how to be that way, and if so, how the hell do you do that?
Before Clint and I got married we had the talk in counseling about how we would do the whole money thing. I had hoped that we could keep our separate accounts as money is a big control area for me, and said so. Brad (knowing my issues) looked at me and said, “Liz I think that not only should you have joint banking accounts, but I think that you should hand over the checkbook to Clint for a whole month”. I had a panic attack right there in the counseling room.
I think the hard truth that I don’t want to think about is that to learn how to rest is to experience a lot of pain first. It’s like Eustace, the boy in the Chronicles of Narnia who is turned into a dragon and longs to be a boy again. In the story, Aslan the lion doesn’t wiggle his nose or shake his magic wand and the boy is healed. No, he tears into his scales with his claws until Eustace thinks he will die.
So I guess that more than wanting rest, I want to be able to stand the process it will take to get there. I hope that I’ve got it in me.
Read any poll regarding the top 10 stress- causing events and undoubtedly moving will always be at the top, following divorce and death of a family member. There’s so much that goes in to moving, the organizing, the packing, the cleaning out of unneeded items. I was really surprised at the two things that stressed me out the most though: the amount of dust and dirt lurking behind all of my furniture that I never knew was there, and the fact that we had movers moving our stuff for us. I somehow felt guilty that they were carrying my stuff…even though I was paying them to do so. I can’t tell you how many times I actually apologized to the movers for having to move our stuff down 4 flights of stairs. I would find myself cleaning extra hard or moving small stuff just to feel like I was doing something too. For the past 3 nights, instead of coming in and chilling out after being up early and at work all day, I’ve come home to my mom and my aunt at my apartment working so I immediately began working too.
Through the events of the past few days I’m coming to understand two things: one is that I have a really hard time letting people do things for me. I either come out feeling guilty or like I need to do something of equal importance back. Two is that I’m starting to understand that deep inside there’s a little bit of OCD in all of us. I’m always making fun of Clint because he literally CANNOT relax if our apartment isn’t picked up. He could work a full day at the store, play a gig until 2 in the morning, and if he came home to a messy apartment he would not be able to sleep until he had put everything away. My OCD is more focused on symmetry and the actual cleanliness (read, if it’s not cloroxed or dusted, it’s not clean). And the thing is, a house is never really clean. It’s an endless job, so I start feeling frustrated that I can’t ever really accomplish anything. I could spend all day doing laundry and at the end of the day, the clothes on my body will be dirty. I could do the dishes, but we’re just going to eat again in a little while. I can scrub the bathtub but it still looks dirty ‘cause it’s an old tub.
It’s weird how the older you get, the more anal you get about stuff. I hate it. I was telling Clint the other night that I really want to learn how to rest. I honestly think I don’t know how. I want to learn how to be ok with not always being in control. I don’t want to think at 23, how could I ever have kids? They would ruin everything. Is restfulness a personality trait written in our DNA? I can think of a couple people whom I would describe as “laid-back” people. Were they born that way or did they learn how to be that way, and if so, how the hell do you do that?
Before Clint and I got married we had the talk in counseling about how we would do the whole money thing. I had hoped that we could keep our separate accounts as money is a big control area for me, and said so. Brad (knowing my issues) looked at me and said, “Liz I think that not only should you have joint banking accounts, but I think that you should hand over the checkbook to Clint for a whole month”. I had a panic attack right there in the counseling room.
I think the hard truth that I don’t want to think about is that to learn how to rest is to experience a lot of pain first. It’s like Eustace, the boy in the Chronicles of Narnia who is turned into a dragon and longs to be a boy again. In the story, Aslan the lion doesn’t wiggle his nose or shake his magic wand and the boy is healed. No, he tears into his scales with his claws until Eustace thinks he will die.
So I guess that more than wanting rest, I want to be able to stand the process it will take to get there. I hope that I’ve got it in me.
9 comments:
The reason I hated Christianity growing up was the whole receiving issue. I always felt bad on birthdays and Christmas getting gifts from people, because I knew how much it cost them to give it to me, and I knew that I could have raked leaves or something to get it myself. And I knew that I wasn't really bad enough that Jesus would have HAD to die just for me, so I stuck it out and saved myself for a long time.
In college a friend was trying to help me out because I was broke and couldn't go out to eat with a big group of people. He offered to pay and I refused. He pretty much pinned me in a corner saying 'it's a gift, accept it. you don't have to pay it back' until I agreed to go out to eat with them. That was when I first learned to love gifts for what they are. I found a lot of freedom learning to take something that was being offered me. I love giving gifts now, but accepting is still a little difficult because I'm holding on to my upbringing.
-by the way, that was about the first part, the help from parents and movers. i don't know how to rest. i don't think i will for a long time, and i hate it.
Great post, Liz. As usual, I'm with you 100%. I'm sick as a dog, got less than six hours of sleep last night, and what was I doing at 5am? Cleaning house and doing dishes b/c I couldn't handle the uncleanliness any longer. Ergh.
i am making my wife read this immediately upon getting out of the shower. sometimes i think the really beautiful things in life aren't when someone gives you an answer to your question but when you see that other people have the same unanswered question too. the house looks great by the way and i am really happy for you guys to be settled in there. please let us know if we can help. oh and thanks for having us over last night.
only 5 more days till las montanas! (i don't know how to do the squiggly over the "n")
JW
liz - rest is an interesting idea. I think I rest, but never when I plan to, and I think also almost never at my home. as much as I long for my home to be a place of rest, I don't think it's very possible.
ersatz- you have really cool things to say.
i think you and clint have really similar sentiments about gift-receiving as well. we talked a lot about it over the christmas holiday.
and i'm definitely still trying to save myself probably will for a long time.
danielle- that is totally me. for a while there i would practically lock myself in the apartment on saturdays and wouldn't let myself do anything i wanted to do until i finished at least the laundry. crazy, eh?
josh- i totally agree. empathy communicates well what advice rarely does.
brian- i hate it that i can rarely rest at home either. when i'm there, all i can think about is everything i should be doing but am not. typically i find the most rest walking around a mall or an airport, surrounded by my own thoughts and people that don't know me. that's probably really weird but it's true.
not weird at all. that's EXACTLY why I try to get out of town so much.
Great post Liz. I am realizing that I spend a lot of energy trying to impose upon my world my idea of the way things ought to be. I think a huge part of rest, for me, might be letting go of the idea that control is even possible, or that "order" is attainable. If it gives you any hope at all, I do think I am less controlling and particular now than I was five years ago, so I don't necessarily think it's true that the older you get, the more anal you get. But it's probably like the parable of the mustard seed--good growth is so slow, and real change comes in such small increments, that we're not even aware of it as it is happening, and in fact it feels like we're stagnant.
What does rest look like to you? Is there an image that comes to mind? Nothing jumps to my mind. I can feel a lot of rest doing simple things like washing dishes and clothes or working at home on some project, but those things can also stress me out and cause frustration/anxiety. On the other hand, walking along a beach at sunset, or playing with my children, or reading a book by a blazing fire on a cold winter afternoon with a hot toddy at hand, things that should be restful, I often do with an underlying sense of uneasiness and impending dread because I am thinking of things that need to be done or problems that need to be solved instead of living in the moment. Maybe one difference is whether I am doing them to try to impose order upon chaos (=stress/frustration/anxiety) or doing them out of a real (if fleeting) sense of abiding well in my place and time in creation and accepting with joy who I am and what has been set before me to do.
brian- good to know I'm not the only one.
jn- yeah...it doesn't seem to matter how much i remind myself that control is just an illusion i've created inside my prideful head, the delusion persists..
what's weird is that for me, rest looks a lot like anonymity. somehow being around people that i don't have to interact with or be known by feels the most relaxing to me, and probably because it's the easiest thing to do. relationships are hard and they hurt, and if you separate yourself from them, you're separating yourself from all the bad stuff that comes with them.
and about the last part: i really don't know what to say about joy or finding it in where i am because most of what i feel right now is anger, anger that jesus could bring me to such a place and (what feels like) abandon me. but that conversation is for a different time and place…
Liz,
I agree with you - there definitly is a little OCD in all of us! My perfection gets in my way too many times..but through time and effort, it seems to have waned a bit to where resting is not as hard as it once was.
Deena
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